Monster ad from Wired
Monster fired the first shot in the ad wars Sunday with a commercial during the AFC championship football game featuring the Boogeyman and a new tagline.
Bad at his job scaring children, the Boogeyman searches Monster and finds his perfect fit as an accountant. As he settles into his cubicle, the words “New precision job search” appear followed by the tagline, “Get a Monster advantage.” The new tagline replaces “Your calling is calling.”
Precision Job Search is the branded seeker product powered by Monster’s overhauled back-end search engine. Power Resume Search is the recruiter version. Both come out of beta on Feb. 2, the official launch date of 6Sense, the branding Monster is applying to the semantic search engine it built out of technology it acquired when it bought Trovix.
Over the last year+ Monster has been introducing new career-focused tools and features, like its career-mapping service and social communities organized around professional careers. Over the summer, it tested its semantic resume search with a number of recruiter clients, then began offering it and the seeker search as options in the fall.
After a demo of the search tools in November, I wrote “Power Resume Search is stunning.” On the seeker side, I’ve found Precision Search (Or is it PrecisionSearch. Monster references it both ways.) to be an equally big improvement over “Standard Search.”
Now, Monster is making a full-court press (or should that be a blitz) to promote 6Sense and the other features. Monster will air a second commercial, this one featuring a beaver, during the Super Bowl, and will also announce its choice of a new Director of Fandemonium during the game. Print ads in tech and business magazines like HR Executive, Wired, and Fast Company have already started running.
“This isn’t just the launch of an advertising campaign. It represents a commitment to help people make clear progress in finding the right job,” says Ted Gilvar, executive vice president and global chief marketing officer at Monster. “We know that people want help — whether it’s a more efficient way to search for jobs or helping them connect with others through specialized career networks.”
CareerBuilder will make its sixth Super Bowl appearance with an ad selected from among those submitted in a contest. Three commercials were eventually picked out of some 1,000 entries and were each awarded grand prizes of $100,000.
The idea was that the public could then vote for their favorite, which might be selected as the one CareerBuilder airs as its second quarter commercial. However, one of the three — Worst Seat — has been nixed by the network. The commercial is pretty gross, showing a cubicle worker entertaining (some) of his colleagues by passing gas. So, of course, that’s the video embedded here.
“CareerBuilder has had a very successful track record with advertising in the big game and we are confident that all three concepts selected would play well with the big game audience,” said Richard Castellini, the job board’s chief marketing officer. “We made a strategic decision to change our advertising approach and leverage the creative minds of consumers across the country. Our decision paid off when we were flooded with a large number of very high caliber ideas, which played a major role in our decision to pick not one, but three.”
A company spokesman told me, “We have not announced any plans for our marketing past the big game.”
11 comments
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Chris Russell Jan 28, 2010 at 8:41 am
ive seen the monster one, that boogeyman is gross…too weird..i think they tried to hard with this one
Power Search heet bijna 6Sense | Algemene vacaturesites | Recruitment Matters - Alles over online recruitment Jan 28, 2010 at 9:26 am
[...] Met dank aan John Zappe [...]
Dan Hilbert Jan 28, 2010 at 10:10 am
John -Great article, but I have to take a strong stand against your title. Being a New Orleans Saints fan for 40 years, this Super Bowl is the biggest event since the American Revolution. I’ll buy you a Saints hat if you learn to say “Who Dat!” Geaux Saints!
Todd Lempicke Jan 28, 2010 at 11:11 am
What amazes me is that there is only about a 20% overlap of people on the monster vs. CB databases, even though the audience is the same – at least for these commercials. I guess most people pick one with the thought that employers or recruiters use both systems.
John Zappe Jan 28, 2010 at 11:37 am
Dan -
I have two words for you: Peyton Manning. And I think he can pronounce your “Who Dat!” Geaux Saints! with the proper Cajun accent although I think he’d be using a question mark instead of an exclamation point.
Dave Pollock Jan 28, 2010 at 11:52 am
A perfect analogy! Colts vs. Saints / Monster vs. CareerBuilder.
In other words, 90% of the public couldn’t care less. The other 10% are rabid fans for no distinguishable reason other than proximity. And they can both be bought or sold at any time with zero impact on the 90% that don’t care.
charles handler Jan 28, 2010 at 12:35 pm
Nice article and nice thread.
Being a New Orleans resident and a long time season ticket holder I am going against all of my professional sensibilities in mixing business with my personal life to say–
Who dat!!!!
The commercials are not going to be long forgotten after we stick it to the Colts.
Jeffrey Perry Feb 1, 2010 at 1:41 pm
Todd (or anyone in the know) – can you tell me what source this comes from?
“There is only about a 20% overlap of people on the monster vs. CB databases”
This stat would be helpful to me but I want to know it is accurate before I circulate it. Thank you.
Todd Lempicke Feb 1, 2010 at 2:11 pm
Sure Jeffrey. I was told of the overlap by a CB rep when considering adding their service. So I thought I would check it out for myself, and spent several hours doing searches using the same filters and counting them using dual monitors side-by-side. The percentages in my samples all hovered around 20%. I performed the searches with several levels of candidates in various geographic areas and tried to mix it up. Note that I got many more hits from monster across the board with the results skewed at the senior executive level. Somewhat surprisingly monster producing much better results at the senior levels. This was done mid December 09.
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